Monster (32 page)

“Thank God.”
She took his hands in hers and kissed them. Then she slipped her hands round the b
ack of
his neck, massaging him lightly at the base of the
skull with her fin
ger
ti
p
s
, relaxing him. Once more he cl
osed
his eyes. She didn't want him to open them again
.
S
he
leaned forward and opened her mouth and kissed
him
once more, deeper than ever, so deep she felt she
was
inside
him,
a
part of him, and that h
e was
a
part of
her. Their
two hearts beat ins
ide each other in ecstasy. She wanted them to be that cl
ose. It was more than a physical
thi
ng;
it was spiritual as well. It was meant to be; she
cou
ld
see that now. But
she wasn't like the othe
rs, because she didn't want him to suffer.
Not her dear Kevin. She just
want
ed to love him
–
to make him hers.

S
he tightened her grip on
the back of his head.

“I
love you, Kevin,
”
she whispered.

I w
ill
always love you. For
ever
and
ever.

Sh
e snapped his head round as hard as she could.

Sh
e heard the bones in his neck crack.

Not like at a chiropractic office, though.

Oh,
no. Much louder cracks.

Kevin
slumped
in
her arms.

He
was no
l
onger breathing hard. Not at al
l
, real
l
y.

He
was just asleep, she thought
.

She
brushed his hair from his face.

He c
ould sleep as long as he liked.

She
kissed his cheek.
“
Love you,
”
she said.

She
opened her mouth and closed her eyes.

She
started. Her mind left her.

It
was a good thing.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Lieutenant Nguyen drove aimlessly around Balton.
He
knew what he had to do. He had
to
go to Angela's h
ouse
and talk to her about Mary's story. Nguyen had a
feeling
Angela believed Mary's story now, and he also beli
eved
she had good reason to. He was almost ready to be
lieve it himself. But Angela had told hi
m to stay away from her. She had
orde
red
him somehow, deep inside his brain. He felt compelled to speak with her, but he felt he'd
be
committing the worst mistake of his life if he got
within
ten miles of her.

He finally ended up stopping at Rest Lawn Cem
etery,
where Todd Green and Kathy Baker had been bu
ried. It was cl
ose to eleven thirty, and naturally the place
was
locked up. But he kept a lock-pick kit in his car
and
could spring any common lock. Besides, if cops came
by,
he could just flash his badge and tell them he was on
police
business.

I'm interrogating the murder victims. They might have
something to
te
ll m
e, after all
.

Actually, he had no idea why he was at the cem
etery.
B
ut
when the lock clicked open in his hands and the metal g
ate
creaked as it swung
cl
e
ar of the entrance road, he felt
a cold hand touch the base of his spine. He didn't want to be there any more th
an he wanted to be in the company
of Angela Warner. He had seen many people die in life
–
hundreds. He had walked by the torn corpses
of
recent comrades after a VC rocket strike and not felt as nervous as he did right then. He stepped inside the cemetery
,
and the cold slowly travelled up his spine to
the re
gion of hi
s
heart. He couldn't be free of the memory of the green stuff that had grown out of the blood of those
two
teenagers. When he had first entered
Jim
Kline's house
after the shootings last week h
e had been ove
r
whe
lm
ed
wit
h sorrow. Now he wondered if he shouldn't have felt r
elief that those two were dead.

The grave sites of Todd and Kathy weren't hard to find. It was a small cemetery, and the flowers from the funerals
we
re still heaped up on the uneven earth rectangles. The
two
had been buried next to each other, Nguyen sighed
and
sat down between the
m, where the grass still grew g
reen
.
He asked himself once more why he was there
.

He felt, in his indecision, that he was missing an import
ant
event
.

He couldn't get Angela's words out of his mind:

“Quit following me. Let me do what I have to do. By the time you know enough to believe what is happening you'll be dead.”

What was Angela going to do? Take up where Mary had
l
eft off? Kill more of them
? The monsters with the green de
mons in their veins and
the red blood in their mouths? T
he last time he had s
een Angela she had been wiping a
way the blood that had spilled from her mouth. Whose
s
ide was she on?

A breeze came up, moaning as it passed through the tranches of nearby trees. Yet the moan did not stop when
th
e wind ceased. The sou
nd seemed to carry across the ce
metery, to come in waves, like the moan that would come
fr
om a living human
being if he or she were in pain. Sitting where
he was, Nguyen's heart began to pound silen
tl
y.

T
he moaning was not coming from the wind.

It
was coming from beside him.

Belo
w
him.

“
Save us, Lord Buddha,
”
he whispered.

Nguyen leaned over and cocked his head above the grave
of
Todd Green. He didn't actually put his ear to the soil,
which
would have been the best procedure to follow if the
moan
were truly coming from under the ground and he
wanted to
verify that fact. He had a fear – i
t was ridicu
lous
but then again, so was what he was hearing
– that a hand
might reach up out of the soil and grab him and pull him under. Or at least pull off his car.
T
ran Quan, that tyrant in his company in Nam, collected the ears of the VC h
e
had killed. Once Nguyen had seen him cut off the ears of one of their own dead soldiers. Nguyen had always had a thing about los
ing his own ears.

The moaning came again.

“Jesus,”
Nguyen whispered. He always called u
pon both Buddha and Jesus when thi
ngs got really bad.

The groan was coming from far under the ground
– like
six feet under. Nguyen told himself that the only thing down there was a box with Todd Green's corpse in it, and that this was not possible. The groan did not sound
fully human, though that did nothing to comfort him. Ra
th
er, it sounded more like some kind of huge, hungry animal.

Nguyen leapt to his feet and took twenty quick step
s
away from the grave
site. There he could no longer h
ear the sound
.
That was goo
d. It had never been there to be
gin with, he thought
.
He had imagined it
.

But then Nguyen made himself take the twenty steps back to Todd's grave, and he heard the moan ag
ain. “Stop,” he screamed at the ground.

The moan stopped.

Todd's corpse had heard and understood him.

Nguyen turned and ran to his car. He started the engin
e
and pulled away from the cemetery at high speed. He had to see Angela Warner, human or not
.
He
had to talk to her.
He
realized
he might have to kill her.

If
she could still be killed.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

They
opened the
door
to the basement near the time she
finished feeding. Fo
r some reason the light in the ba
sement
had failed, and she had had to satisfy her hunger
i
n
darkness. The shaft of light from upstairs stung her eyes.
Th
ey
were up there
–
she could see them s
t
aring down at
her.
Somebody named
Jim
was at the front of
the pack.

“We are going to have a meeting,”
the one called
Jim
said.

She stood and saw she was soaked in blood
.
It was
every
where around her, dripping off small chunks of torn
flesh
. She couldn't remember exactly
where it had come fr
om, but it had been good
–
the blood and the flesh.
Sh
e
could also remember
the pounding in her head, but t
hat had stopped, which was also good
. The pounding had been
painful. She walked to the steps.

“I will come to your meeting,”
she said.

“Clean up first,”
the one named
Jim
said.

“I will clean up first,”
she said.

She went up the stairs, and then up another flight to
a
room she recognised. It was called bedroom, and it belonged to a human called Angela Warner. She knew Angela
–
she was Angela. She was that body. It was the body and the clothes on the body that had to be cleaned
u
p. She was alone in the room but knew what to do. It
w
a
s
called shower, which she could do in the place called shower. That was in the bathroom, which was over there. She understood these things
–
so
rt
of. First the blood had to come off.

The water came out warm, and it reminded her of the
blood. She did not need any blood right now but she'd need some
l
ater
.
The need would always be there but as long
a
s
there was
blood, the painful pounding would
stay away. The meeting could be about fi
nding more blood. When she was cl
ean she'd go to the meeting.

The water wa
s
hed away the blood. When she stepp
ed
out of the shower she saw a thing called robe. Angela Warner would put on the robe after shower, so she p
u
t on the robe. It was yellow, and her hair was wet as
she
looked in the mirror. There was no blood
.
Angela Warner would smile when she looked in the mirror, so she smiled
.
The smile showed her teeth, which she'd use the next time she needed blood.

There was something sitting on the counter of the bath
r
oom in front of the mirror.
It
was
called picture. S
he
picked it up: a picture of people. She recognised the bodies. Angela Warner, Mary Blanc
,
Kevin Jacobs. They were holding one another and smiling
.
They were
– she
had trouble with the word, but it came at last
– happy. Happy bodies.
She knew the word, but not the meaning. But she believed happy meant the pounding had stopped and that there was blood. She decided she was happy. Happy and clean.

There was something else on the countertop. It was t
he
colour gold and shaped like a KAtuu minus its head. She knew what a KAtuu
was.
She
was
KAtuu
.
She was part
of
the World. Angela Wa
rner's body would change into this
shape KAtuu as time passed. If there was enough blood.
It
took a lot of blood, many k
illings, to become a full KAtuu. She knew that. I
t was her destiny.

But she didn't kn
ow why she suddenly put the amule
t over her head.

It ma
y have been she had another desti
ny.

Even now
–
so late.

A powerful tremor passed through her body. Her mind
,
her connection
to
the World and
a
ll
the KAt
uu that
were
and had ever been, was suddenly made visible in her be
ing. A ghostly red ri
bbon circled the house and all the
KAtuu that
were gathered there; it streamed off into the sky and
then
deep int
o space, out to where the
surviving
cells of
the
World
tumbled
for ever on the surface of mis
s
hapen
astero
ids
in t
he endless black of the abyss. They called
to her,
and
she
called to them. They desperately wanted her
to st
ay
a
part of them and bring the flow of blood among
t
he
enemy that had destroyed the World
.

Bu
t something else also called, in a voice that belonged
to
the
body alone. It
was
the voice of Angela Warner's
th
oughts. It was the sound of Angela's heart, beating deep
i
n
side the body; pounding, not like the pain in the head
when
the blood was not available, but throbbing with the
feel
ings of
the
enemy.

But who was the enemy?

Who had invaded whom?

T
hey in
vad
e
d us.